Outlook vs. My CPU
Yesterday I noticed that Outlook 2007 was chomping down about 50% of my CPU on a continuous basis. I thought it might be syncing folders and such in the background (I am linked to an Exchange account), or performing an archiving process. So, trusting in the fact that I hadn’t seem the issue before I just let it go…..overnight. In the morning, still running 50%. Umm…..
Okay, close down outlook. Note that Process Explorer still show it running…..and still taking 50% CPU. Kill outlook and restart. Runs okay for 30 seconds, then immediately starts chewing CPU.
First step was to figure out the last thing I installed, which was SnagIt. It does have an Outlook add-in so that is the likely culprit. I go into the Trust Center and attempt to disable the add-in. Since I’m running Vista I get a warning about not being able to change a registry key in HKLM. What? Why the heck is the setting in HKLM? Isn’t this a user setting? I take a look at what the add-in actually does and decide that it’s nothing I can’t do with the print screen key or judicious use of the SnagIt tray icon, so I uninstall the plug-in keeping SnagIt installed. With that taken care of I open outlook…..which starts chewing CPU cycles again. The SnagIt add-in wasn’t the problem (yeah!).
Next step is to look at all the other add-ins I’m running. Most of the Google traffic I saw on hanging and CPU hogging Outlook issues was because of add-ins. I found that I could disable some of them without admin rights, but had to launch outlook (after killing it again) as Administrator to stop the rest.
Then I stumbled across a few mentions of an add-in called Cyberlink. It mapped to one of the add-ins on my box that was mysteriously named “outlookaddin” (Because that wasn’t obvious). This is an add-in that comes installed on Dell machines that have MediaDirect installed. It’s used to pull some of the data from your Outlook profile so that when you boot to MediaDirect it can be accessed. Several people complained about this add-in, so I disabled it and restarted Outlook. Low and behold Outlook popped up like three times as fast as before and happy rested at 0 CPU usage once it was loaded and finished syncing with the exchange account. This was my culprit.
Out of curiosity I looked at a few of the other add-ins and disabled them. One was a “Microsoft Exchange Unified Messaging” add-in that was used to incorporate the voice mail functionality between Exchange and Outlook 2007. My Exchange host isn’t offering those services so I could turn that off. Another one was “Microsoft Office SharePoint Server Colleague Import Add-in”. I’m still not clear on what this does, but apparently it is supposed to help recognize users on a SharePoint site as people I work with on a regular basis. Needless to say I turned it off. Another one was “Microsoft Outlook Mobile Service”, which allows you to send text messages via Outlook. Hmmm, not needed, so off it went as well.
You might want to take a look at what add-ins are in your Outlook (Tools -> Trust Center -> Add-ins tab). I’m sure there are a few installed that you aren’t using and that are just taking up cycles or RAM.
Why the CyberLink add-in just decided to start eating cycles is beyond me. It’s been on the box for several months without this issue. It also has been known to create recurring appointments randomly from your existing appointments, which had been happening to me. It also was known to make Outlook stop responding for periods of 15-30 seconds as you typed. That had been going one for quite some time somewhat randomly. Both were very annoying. But all is well now.
While this was very frustrating and NOT something I think most non-tech people would have been able to take care of, I do think it’s not as bad as having to try resize a window on MAC when you can’t reach the bottom right hand corner of the window (sucks to be you Ed).